


We Need to Talk About the Baseball Shirt

by maya_idk



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Baseball, Canon Compliant, David's Baseball Sweater, Episode: s03e08 Motel Review, Episode: s03e09 The Affair, Gen, M/M, Why does he have it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27865773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maya_idk/pseuds/maya_idk
Summary: I'm just saying. I rewatched Schitt's Creek and this sweater stood out like a sore thumb and it needs to be discussed.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer & David Rose, Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	We Need to Talk About the Baseball Shirt

David didn't even know why he had the sweater. Honestly. Where to start?

First of all, it was grey, which he wasn't fundamentally opposed to, being that it was a combination of the two colors - _shades_ if you wanted to be obnoxious about it - that he wore most often. It's just that generally he enjoyed black and white as separate entities, even if they were together in the same piece of clothing or outfit, they were distinct from each other. So it was odd for him to even have a grey sweater in the first place. But still, it would've been pretty innocuous amongst his suitcases of clothes; it must have been, given that he'd sifted through his Love Room wardrobe hundreds of times in the past couple years and never noticed it. No, the weird thing about the sweater wasn't that it was grey. The giant baseball on the front was a bit more unusual.

Because why would he have a baseball shirt? You didn't have to have a Master's in David Rose to know that he didn't play and/or enjoy sports. That was like, something you would figure out before even signing up for David 101. Not that many people were eager to study him. Or that he'd open many seats in those classes, when the few who’d excelled only ended up turning that information against him before graduation.

Whatever. The point was, he obviously didn’t like sports. God knows why he let his dad push him into playing a season of Little League. A broken nose to get rid of the basketball court, a concussion to get out of the baseball team. Unfortunately, the concussion hadn’t been intentional, and it turned out hurting your brain kind of sucked more than hurting your nose. And that wasn’t even the only reason he didn’t like sports. They were gross and sweaty and pointless and the rules were too complicated to follow and they had weird “bro” cultures that David wasn’t particularly a fan of. Sure, sometimes there were hot guys playing, but there were plenty of better ways to look at hot people than watching sports, which, _God_ , was so boring, _especially_ baseball. Golf was pretty much the only sport more boring to watch, but baseball was down there, and all the other sports were not much higher up.

So why the fuck would he have a sweater with an outline of a baseball on it? Not to impress someone he’d been dating or trying to date, certainly. David did want to impress people, but only by loudly and flashily accentuating a few carefully curated parts of himself that were actually real. He wouldn’t have pretended to be into baseball. He couldn’t have kept up a lie like that anyway, clearly.

Maybe he bought it as a joke? He must have. A joke made while under the influence of something, since that would be the only explanation for David having no recollection of coming upon the sweater. Sure. Maybe he and his New York friends were high and they went into a Forever 21 because “God, could you imagine,” and then he bought this grey sweater with a baseball on it, because of course everything at Forever 21 has to have some irredeeming design on it, David didn’t even shop there and he knew that.

For some reason, as he sorted through his piles of clothing that morning, he found it. David held the shirt out in front of him and turned it around, trying to figure out its story. Well, there was no tag, so maybe it really was from some janky fast fashion store, and he had the wherewithal to dispose of the evidence and spare himself some embarrassment if anyone ever found it. The quality of the fabric wasn’t bad, though.

David was continuing to ponder the sweatshirt when a text pinged on his phone.

**Patrick Rude Guy:** Be by the store today to drop off your business license.

What?! He _was_ rude.

~~~

“He _was_ rude,” David repeated to Stevie for the third time that afternoon. They were sat on the floor of the room they’d been cleaning, or, well, Stevie had been cleaning, before she announced that one of their guests had been courteous enough to leave them a little thank-you in the form of a joint.

Stevie snorted. “Well, I’m rude and you seem to put up with me.”

“Of course you’re rude! Alexis is rude! My mom is rude! I’m rude! My entire life revolves around rude people!”

“So… what’s the problem here?”

“Ugh.” David shut his eyes, tipped his head back, and sucked air through his teeth. “There’s nothing wrong with being rude, per se. But he was rude to me, a stranger, in a professional setting! That’s incorrect.”

“Ah, I see.” Stevie nodded seriously, then slowly rearranged her face into a devious grin. “What if he was flirting with you, though?”

David rolled his eyes. “Flirting with a stranger in a professional setting through teasing would also be incorrect. Plus, I would’ve told you by now if I got a _vibe_ from him.”

“So he was cute,” she egged him on.

“Sure, in an overgrown boy-next-door kind of way,” he huffed. “So there’s four attractive men my age that I won’t be hooking up with in this town instead of three. So what?”

Stevie laughed. “Alright, so the guy who works with Ray _is_ cute but was _not_ flirting with you. Tell me more about how he was rude, then.” She smiled and blinked at him expectantly.

“Gladly.” David got up to give himself more creative space for the reenactment. “So, like, I was trying to explain the store to him, and he kept laughing at me and saying he couldn’t put anything I said on the incorporation papers. And then he said I was ‘batting a thousand,’” David exaggerated with air quotes, “which, what does that even mean? A thousand what?”

“It’s just a saying, David. It comes from baseball.” David raised his eyebrows. “I think it’s like when you’re doing really well at something.” Stevie paused for a second, opening and closing her mouth with a puzzled expression on her face. “I don’t really get how he would say that to you if he was being mean, though.”

“Oh, he was obviously being sarcastic then, Stevie! He was mocking what a _great job_ I was doing with the forms. And of _course_ he uses baseball analogies. He’s exactly the kind of guy that puts on his midrange denim, heads on down to the local sports bar, and nurses a beer while watching the game with a horde of his boring, Canadian, baseball-loving clones. And then he thinks he can turn around and make fun of _me!_ Ugh.”

Stevie widened her eyes. “A damning assessment. Why, again, are we so invested in this guy who works for Ray? And does he have a name?”

“It’s Patrick, and I’m not invested! I’m just saying, it’s so typical that he would be a baseball guy.”

~~~

David was putting on the baseball shirt. He was just trying it to see how it looked on him. Not bad. A sweater would never look bad on him. He was going to wear it for the day. Because his clothes were the only tangible marker of who he was or had been, save for the beginnings of the store, and they all deserved to be in the rotation, even the graphic tees he bought in his 20s, and even the sweater with the big baseball. It didn’t have anything to do with cute, rude Patrick the washed up, preppy jock or the fact that he was coming to the store. It was a principle thing. But there’d be no harm if Patrick _happened_ to see him in it and realize he didn’t have David all figured out yet. David could throw Patrick for a bit of a change-up, too.

**Author's Note:**

> My family went through the series on Netflix recently and I've been obsessed. The AO3 fandom has only fueled my Schitt's Creek love. Hope everyone enjoys my first contribution!


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